


Athanatos

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Arts & Sciences RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-12
Updated: 2008-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1624541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for inrevolt</p>
    </blockquote>





	Athanatos

**Author's Note:**

> Written for inrevolt

 

 

"God, no, _go away_ ," Brooke mutters tiredly to the canvas of his cot. The footsteps pause and in the little silence, a wave hisses to shore and back. There's a hesitant sound, like half a forward motion, but it terminates in the brisk click of boot heels clipping away. Brooke listens. A tiny breeze ruffles his hair. The sounds of the others are muffled, and fade into the background: the waves washing in, slipping out. In, out. In, out. With deep, soft sighs, sad and sympathetic, like cools hands touching his face. He begins to doze. 

The sun warms the earth of the island they've anchored near, smelling faintly of sage and hot stones. He turns towards the smell, trying to warm himself with it, and tugs the thin blanket up over his shoulders again. He wants another one, but somehow he forgets to ask, when there's anyone around worth asking. The canvas cot stretches and creaks underneath him, too small for much shifting. Brooke has always been a mover in his sleep. More than once, he's wakened with a jolt to find himself on the floor - only grateful that his was the lower bunk. And his cabin-mates laughed, told him he needed railings; if it weren't for the door, he'd roll right overboard, ha-ha. Even the little seasick one stopped puking long enough to laugh at that. 

This cot's even smaller than the bunk. But there's no one else in here to tease, and he doesn't feel much like moving. _You're ill,_ they told him when he came-to the first time. _I know,_ he wanted to retort; _can't you see?_ All so bloody stupid. But his head was throbbing too hard to formulate words, and all he could do was stare, feeling heavy and thick. 

_Shhhh..._ a wave licks the side of the boat. His skin twitches in response, once, again, and then in a spastic crawl. His teeth start to chatter. He pulls the blanket tighter round him, folding his hands into his armpits. It's not that he's cold, really. The heat stings his skin, like the glancing light off the water. If he opens his eyes, he'll see it, shimmering over the island. It's like a layer, though, a thin one; and the rest of him shivers inside it. 

_Il y a longtemps que je t'aime; jamais je t'oublierai..._ The words float into his head for no reason, with their thin, scratchy tune. Brooke hates gramophones. They warp sound. They make music reedy and voices flat. And they play the most annoying records, play them over and over, over and over, to nerve-fraying repetition of the same mindless words. _Il y a longtemps que je t'aime..._

"Bugger," he exhales. Now he'll never get rid of it. A thump of footsteps outside the door; a distant noise of shouting. He tucks his chin and curls closer against himself. For a long moment, he stays like that, and he nearly falls asleep. Then a nagging little pain hooks a muscle near his spine and begins to cramp, sharp and twanging. He ignores it. It twangs some more. He turns over and it _really_ twinges.

" _Fuck,_ " he hisses between his teeth, trying to raise himself. Probably all this lying down; everything bunches up. _...jamais je t'oublierai._ "Shut up," he spits at the mental sound, pushing himself to an elbow and trying to stretch. That feels good, actually, and he's surprised, in the way of the sick to suppose everything feels wretched. He sits up, the blanket falling to his lap, and raises his arms over his head, luxuriating in the pull of his muscles on his bones. 

Oh-h. Brooke freezes and lowers his arms slowly. For a hideous pause, he sits there, white and sweating, afraid to move. Then with a shuddering chill and sudden burst of saliva, his stomach makes up its mind, and his knees hit the floor bruisingly hard as he scrambles for the bucket. 

"Oh, hell," says the medic patiently, looking in as he passes by. He shakes his head and walks off, coming back a moment later with some wet washcloths and a cupful of milk of magnesia. Brooke's wrists tremble, braced against the floor. 

"Here, now," a voice is saying, helping him to sit back. He looks up and his head starts to spin, blurry flashes of light hot-and-cold on his eyes. Before he can blink, he's over the bucket again with a hand on his neck and another on his chest. 

"All right," the medic says briskly, but kindly. "That's enough." He wipes the vomit from Brooke's mouth and chin and struggles the boy out of his filthy shirt, helping him lift himself back into the cot. The other washcloth he lays on Brooke's forehead to draw the fever away, and slipping a hand beneath his shoulders, he coaxes a mouthful of milk of magnesia down his throat. Useless remedies, but all-purpose ones, and it's not easy being medic during a war. He pats Brooke's shoulder and walks back out, taking the shirt and the bucket with him. 

For several minutes, Brooke just lies there, looking at the light behind his eyelids. He hears the medic come back in and set the cleaned-out bucket down with a clank. A bead of water frees itself from the edge of the washcloth and trails ticklish into his ear. He feels his heart thump until the jerky gallop settles into a steadier trot. The breeze makes a little noise, brushing his cheeks. _Il y longtemps que je t'aime..._

"Hell," he whispers, trying to feel defiant. _Shhhhh...._ the sea murmurs. Wetness swells suddenly beneath his lashes. _I want to -_ His eyes snap open and force the thought away. The hard blue glint of the Aegean stretches under the arid sky. The curve of the island is white with sun-bleached stone. Everything looks cruel, somehow, too bright, too dark. Too _dry_. Scorched with sea and salt and sun into bold, pitiless colours that will never be forever England, no matter where they bury him. 

Oh, he knows. They're not saying, but he knows. And the thought of that harsh sun on him, the brittle glitter in the water and the indifferent sea-song rushing in his ears, kissing coarsely those white, white rocks - _I want - !_

"I want to go home." He says it as flatly as possible, and twists the blanket in his fists. There. Everything he hasn't said since all this began; he joined because he wanted to _leave_ ; he had to get away. He wanted to do this. Wanted. His choice. The quartermaster's whistle blows, thin and high above. A splash of laughter dabbles his hearing, and the pale forms of shirtless boys jumping into the water for a swim. 

"I want to go _home,_ " he whispers, tight-wound misery in his chest. 

But where is home? He can't imagine going back to that life, so dull, so horribly _tiring_ , or England's gentle greens and greys. One by one, he conjures up the faces of his friends. Could he talk to them, now? Does he want to? Jim hates him: he made sure of that. Frances hates him. Geoffrey hates him. Everybody hates him. And Ka... he can't even think of Ka. Was it deliberate, he wonders, some subconscious prescience, and he hopes it was. Because he doesn't understand it, otherwise; why he drove them all away. 

_Il y a longtemps -_ He bites his lip in a short, furious gesture. He doesn't even remember the song; just those verses. Played somewhere in Belgium, some cheap night-club. Or was it? A man's voice, scratched onto a record; a man's voice, soft with regret. Not the tinkling whine of the songs from home, or the nasal swing of the French mademoiselles. An old record. _Il y a longtemps que je t'aime; jamais je t'oublierai..._

Will they forget him? The boys in the water laugh and shout. The crinkled sea sparkles, hot and bright, and for some reason he thinks of Tahiti again; that lovely, pointless Paradise. It was nice - it was more than nice, it was fantastic; it was Eden. But it was surreal, and he couldn't help feeling that someday the bubble would pop. So he left. And America - America was _vast_. Not in a grand, awe-inspiring sense. Simply vast, like the space between stars. 

But that was all before; and now he's here. _I want to go home,_ Brooke thinks again, and the words feel flimsy. Home... maybe this is home. The vague sweetness of sage and dusty rocks and straw-coloured sunlight. His head hurts. He walked that island only a few days ago. It didn't seem so bad. Will they ever come to visit him there?... tangles of dried grass and the grey bark of wild olives. A little lukewarm stream. Will anyone... does anyone... 

The sea reflects darkly in his eyes. The breeze is evaporating the moisture from the washcloth and the sun has warmed it too much for comfort. After a moment, he reaches up and pulls it away. He's not cold anymore, he notices listlessly. Footsteps come and go outside the door. Where are his friends; why aren't they here? Why don't they come talk to him?... _Because you don't have any,_ his intellect coolly replies. 

"Yes," he protests aloud; weak voice inaudible against his sheets. But admirers are not friends, and all his friends are gone. He left them. _Il y a longtemps que je t'aime, il y a longtemps..._ That man's voice, echoing in his mind. Every scratch on the record fizzed, muting it to a sort of faded pathos, like old flowers, frail and thin. Sad with the sorrow of might-have-been. Oh, all the things that might have been.

The headache begins to beat behind his eyes. He doesn't want to think about this. Not much else to think about, though. Except the island. Dust and sun and salt and stone; sea and sky. The island. And his poems; that wretched poem will be his epitaph. And the world will look with ignorant kindness on him because of it, and forget. That was Achilles' heartache, his spur; not to be forgotten. Yet he was, and only the words remain of the man who mourned for fallen Patroklos.

Home - where they knew him; home - where they care. Home, where he's more than just a name, and the colour of his hair will bring back memories. Home, not a place, but summer afternoons, and quiet evenings reading books; and the racing flush of first kisses; and the familiar scent of lilacs in spring. He wants to go home. He wants home to come to him. A face, a voice, a step in the hall: it would be enough. 

_Il y a longtemps que je t'aime; jamais je t'oublierai... do you speak French?_ and Brooke remembers where he heard it, and he remembers he was barefoot, and suddenly tears are in his eyes. That silly old gramophone; antiquated machine. Creaking out the thin, soft song. _Claire Fontaine_. And the startled look in those dark eyes, blinking at the floor. It wasn't that long ago, really. How strange, to remember him now. 

Brooke presses his face to his pillow to shut out the light. The sweat creeps across his skin. A few days; a week. Maybe tomorrow. It might be. So many things might be. The wash of the waves rocks the boat imperceptibly. 

"Oh, I bet you get the ladies with _that_ , Tris!" someone yells outside.

"Eh, fuck you!" comes the reply, to hoots of breathless laughter. Brooke buries his face deeper in his pillow and turns away. A lurch of dizziness seizes his stomach and sets it to roiling again, subsiding after a moment with a break of perspiration from his scalp. _...A little._ The crackle of the fire. Slowly, his mind reconstructs the room to dim, flame-flickered proportions, warm with the wooden panelling and hazy with yellow light. _Claire Fontaine_ playing on the table. 

Of all the things to recall... it comes back so easily, posture and voice, the quiet voice with no particular aim that spoke only a few times, and hesitantly. A stammer and a slur, a stammer in a slur, some sort of impediment that lowered it still further and made it hard to hear. But he can hear it now; it swims into his brain almost unbidden; something about Kipling. In the self-conscious, diffident tone that so belied his movements and his gait. 

The pillowcase is too warm; Brooke turns over again, cheek seeking a cooler surface. The brilliance of the rocky coast pierces his eyelids and glows through them, orange and traced with delicate red. He could count the blood vessels, there, if he concentrated, and thinks how peculiar it is to live with one's body so long and still not know it. 

_Il y a longtemps que je t'aime..._ He _knew_ his body, that was the difference. But it wasn't conscious. It was the soft shake of his head to get the hair out of his eyes - Brooke has known a hundred actors who studied that motion to exhaustion. None who did it with that unaffected ease. And the angle of his neck, and the bones in his face. The careful, reluctant smile. _I'm boring you -_

Why this? Why not his mother? Or his childhood? Or James? The sea burns blue through the criss-cross of Brooke's lashes. He shuts it out with a blink and turns away. The canvas rustles tightly beneath him, and a faint smell of sick still taints the room under the salt and sage. His mother - Brooke frowns against his headache, but nothing comes except half a nursery rhyme and a sound of long skirts swishing. Or a lot of things come - but none seem real save the rhyme and the skirts. His childhood feels viewed from a very great distance, too long ago to matter anymore. And James - oh, James. Oh, all of them. 

_Shhhh...._ breathes the sea. 

Why aren't they here; why don't they come - but would he want them to? And something in him sighs. They know him too well. He hurt them too much. They're not his, anymore; they're not real. 

But him - _no, not at all,_ how to explain that everything bored him, everything made him tired; company, solitude, rest, restlessness - how to tell him everything was like this. He didn't ask, though. And Brooke felt something that maybe wasn't part of everything. That's why. The blackness of those eyes, the red in his hair. The pitch of his voice. That's why. 

The shouts from the water have silenced, and the foam hisses on the sand. The breeze that stirs the olive leaves whisks lightly over his back. The blood throbs in his head. He would like to see him again. Here, now; just to see him again. To hear the words formed blurred and low, like the voice of some mute, wild thing; to watch those large, reflective eyes take in the room in pensive blinks. Brooke doesn't care what he might say or see. 

In a few days, he'll be there, with the olive trees, where the sun shines in the brazen blue sky. And they don't much matter, all the might-have-beens. The could-haves and should-haves, right or wrong turns. _Jamais je t'oublierai..._ He would like to kiss him again, that soft, startled mouth, expecting nothing, taking nothing. 

"I want to go home," he whispers. Home, to quiet reading, or that wood-panelled room. To a kiss and a look and a slow, dark smile. Not to James or his mother or Frances or Ka. Not to anyone who needed explanations. Just someone; just that one, with his unexpected grace. Someone who didn't know him; someone who wasn't hurt. Someone who wouldn't have to forgive. 

_Shhhhh..._ soothe the waves. _Shhhh... shhhh..._

The rocks dazzle the horizon; the water glints like steel. The dried grass on the island is frail as silk, yellow-thin. Just a face, a voice, a step in the hall: it would be enough. 

So he wouldn't have to die alone.

 


End file.
